


Lately, The Things I Do Astound Me

by absinthe118



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Bisexual Male Character, Bisexuality, Closeted Character, F/M, M/M, Multi, Post-War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-05-18 04:28:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14845706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/absinthe118/pseuds/absinthe118
Summary: Years after Korea, Trapper prepares for a visit from Hawkeye that will disrupt his new life in Boston.





	1. Old Voices

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone. This is my first fic (of any kind!). If I have time I'll add more chapters to it. I love Trapper and it was fun to write him even though this is a sad story.

******************************************

“Lucy, let’s talk for a minute.” John swirled the ice around in his glass and made it clink a couple of times, then headed from the bar cart back to the couch. He couldn’t find a coaster so he put the glass of Scotch down, carefully, onto a ring on the coffee table that already existed. Sprawling out, he spread his arm behind him and stretched his long legs across the rug, a parody of relaxation.

“I’ll clean tomorrow and I’ll make up the back room for Hawkeye,” Lucy said. She had a textbook on her lap, pencil behind her ear, leg hooked over the arm of the easy chair. “I’ve been so busy.”

“Not about that. I mean really talk.” True, she was messy. Seeing her papers and clothes on the floor could make him a little uneasy sometimes, and she once asked if that was because it reminded him of the army. Well, she was messy and smart.

Looking up from the book, she must have seen something—excessive blinking, or the way he screwed one corner of his mouth into his cheek. “You OK, Johnny?”

It was Hawkeye Pierce—his onetime best friend, the one who was visiting in a few days—that was the problem. He never could keep things to himself. It seemed he was living with a man now; his lover. _We’re good together, that’s all. I’ve honestly never been happier._ Hearing it over the phone in his office, John had felt a crackle of energy: anger, or maybe panic. When Hawk came to Boston he’d probably tell everyone.

“Hell, I’m OK,” John said. “You’re looking at a top cardiac surgeon at Mass General. Maybe the best in the city. With a steady girl who wants to go to Maui on his salary.”

“I wanted you to come, too, you know. You need a break.”

“Forget what I need.” He drank all the Scotch and put the glass back down, carefully again. “I want to talk to you about Hawkeye.”

There was jazz on the radio. Lucy, eyes steady and staring, closed the book. “I know,” she said. “One, he’s the best doctor you’ve ever worked with, and two, we should restock the gin before he gets here.”

“He likes guys,” said John.

Lucy threw him a look that seemed to say he was wasting her time.

“Like, he really likes ‘em,” he continued. “The way you and I are—that’s how he is with his new buddy with a Y chromosome.”

She smiled; it was like a high-beam on her smooth face. “So your friend’s queer. Why’d you need to dumb it down?”

“I don’t know. I hope your IQ can forgive me.” His head throbbed with the discomfort of what was coming next.

 _Innocent_ was the word he kept going back to. _I was innocent._ Even with the horror they saw daily, even as a married man with a young family stateside, he’d felt free back then to let affection happen to him in all its forms, and in that place he welcomed it like you welcome a hot shower. More often, too.

It was only after the war that the sadness wore on him, and turned into a kind of dullness. The drinking got bad and there were affairs. Divorce—he didn’t care about the money much, because he made enough, but being pulled from his daughters took a toll. His practice in Boston flourished alongside his family’s scorn. When Lucy appeared she hadn’t seemed real, the way she’d led with a pickup line: _Are you a lapsed Catholic, Dr. McIntyre? ‘Cause I feel guilty just looking at you._ One semester shy of a sociology degree, blonde, criminally sexy and wily as a fox. _Buzz off already, I think I have a daughter your age._ But he was hooked that second.

“There’s more I want to tell you.” His hands were sweaty; he rubbed them on the knees of his pants. “In Korea I was young. I did a lot of fooling around.”

“So? You fool around a lot now, and you’re old.”

“Come on, will you?”

“Sorry.”

He didn’t want to have to say it. Maybe she could already tell. But he got it out, first about the first time it happened, on his cot under the blanket, a joyful blur of mouths and hands. His handsome roommate, one year younger than him, a lithe, broad-shouldered kid who’d once caught one of his passes in college. This had cost Dartmouth the game, and in the army he bested John again. Anticipated his moves. When it was hot out they’d meet up in different places around camp, at night when the work was finished, their OR scrubs discarded behind bushes to be found in the morning by an orderly. They were sometimes rough with each other, rough like football had been, and this he found satisfying, to prove to someone big and strong that he was bigger and stronger. Bruises on his thighs and wrists were a comfort until they faded. It would happen most frequently like it did that first night, though—sensing his need, Hawk would get him off under the covers and then crawl across the room to his own bed and leave him there, drunk and sleepy, no reciprocation necessary, and no talking either. Remembering this, John felt his throat close up. It was gratitude.

At the MASH there had been an endless succession of girls, a clown car of them, most of them hot and adorable and just as scared as he was. They stood on their tiptoes to hug him around the neck and they told him he was cute, a dreamboat, a dish. But as well as he did with them, Hawk with his grey eyes and brooding charm always did just a little better. When he and his bunkmate got to trading stories, John would feel two kinds of jealous. It didn’t seem right to care, though, since this was all just a backdrop to the influx of dying boys, boys they could not always save with their skill and attention—sweat-drenched faces, viscera spilling out of bellies, strong young bodies they often had to work through the night to keep warm. One night they toiled, together, on opposite sides of the table stitching up three feet of a man’s small intestine. _Good hands_ , he said to Hawk afterward, laughing with the triumph of it, and reached across the divider of the shower stall to press Hawk’s palm against his own. Their fingers were the same length, long, surgeons’ fingers. _You got good hands._

By now Lucy was next to him on the couch, her eyebrows gathered together in a frown. He wanted to grip her shoulders, wrestle her into the cushions, do a forceful thing to make the tension disappear. For a second he recalled going on what for the Swampmen was a “date,” sneaking off into the supply room with his arm around a little nurse he burned for. Hawkeye blocked their path, bowed: _He’s a great kisser, Lieutenant. You’re gonna like him._

“I don’t know what to say about this, Johnny,” Lucy said. “It’s a surprise.”

“Yep.” Not a lot to add, was there. The jazz station on the radio picked that moment to play Chet Baker Sings, “Like Someone in Love.” He could smell Lucy’s sweat, the musk coming off her skimpy cotton blouse.

“I guess my first question is, were you in love with him?” She said it with an edge to her voice, aggressive, a person staking her claim.

“I loved him.” John’s eyes were wet by the time he spoke the words. “ _In_ love is something different.”

Instead of reaching for an embrace, Lucy sprang up from the couch, poured herself a vermouth and soda that she seemed in a rush to ingest. “And do you love him now?”

“Honey, what are you talking about? I haven’t even seen him in ten years!” When he lost his temper his voice got high, uncontrolled.

“Well, in order for you to do… that with him, there must have been, you know, intense feelings.” She stood there with her lips parted, brown eyes sparkling.

“Yeah, there were intense feelings,” he said. “We called it war. Tell me more about intense feelings when you come home from your first tour of duty.”

“I can’t speak to you like this if you’re going to get defensive.”

“Fair enough. Lemme go out.” He raked a hand through the wispy mass of his hair, thin on top now, before getting up decisively.

“When are you coming back?”

As he checked his blazer pockets for wallet and keys, he looked at Lucy taking a sip of her drink, blinking into the ceiling light fixture so she wouldn’t cry. Pink fingernails tapping the glass, curve of her slender waist descending into the flare of her skirt. The legs of a beach bunny wearing the Mary Jane shoes of a schoolmarm. Chet Baker sang, _Each time I look at you I’m limp as a glove / And feeling like someone in love._

A low voice from another life, slicing into him below the navel as surely as, why not, a scalpel. _I’ve been waiting for this, Trap. It’ll be good to see you again._ John turned the doorknob, slipped outside and let the door slam behind him, its cut glass rattling as he walked down the front stoop. The damp New England night offered up no answers.


	2. Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trapper takes a walk to clear his head after revealing his long-held secret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song, "Like Someone In Love," that the work title comes from is referenced again here. (I like Chet Baker's version but there have been many beautiful recordings of it!)

 

                                     ******************************************

 

It wasn’t that late, but the street along the river was empty of cars and John walked right down the middle, with the town on one side of him and the riverbank on the other. He heard geese honking in flight, arriving north for Spring, and tried to time his footfalls to their voices. Step-step-step-step _honk_ , step-step _honk_. People always told John he was a good dancer.

Served him right, he thought, deciding to live with a girl—he could have guessed it would be a headache sometimes. Equal parts oversensitivity and snobbery, that was Lucy underneath the pantyhose, and without her he could’ve been alone, relaxed. He’d needed to go for it, though. No denying she held some sway over him.

Maybe, he thought, his problem was that he always needed a new thing to try—an experience, a perspective. One of his biggest fears had always been that he was missing something, something that might make life more fun. He turned away from the river and into a dark side street. Another fear was losing: a game, a bet, or a person.

He’d lost Hawkeye, he reminded himself. Hawk had been dead to him, not because of any falling-out but because of an army mix-up that sent an erroneous letter. _It's with our deepest sorrow that we inform you,_ that kind of thing. This, the effort to accept Hawk as a changed man, was not as difficult as that. So why did it still bring John back to that place of loss, of knowing they’d never see each other again? Hawk had someone else now, but at least he was alive.

At the end of the street was a tavern, shining a dim red light onto the sidewalk, with a stuffed owl in the window. John drank at this place once every few months, sometimes less, sometimes more—the way a guy might go to a casino if he liked to gamble, but didn’t exactly have a gambling problem. “Welcome back,” said the smiling man standing guard at the door, a greaser type with Brylcreemed hair and acne scars. John nodded at him; he both liked and didn’t like being recognized.

“That’s a pretty stiff drink,” a boy said to him as he settled on the end of the bar with his double Scotch. “Then again, you look like a pretty stiff guy.” It wasn’t too busy inside the narrow room. Men--just men--chatted and laughed in small groups here and there.

“Well, watch me loosen up once it’s done,” said John, teeth clenched for effect, looking straight ahead at a cigarette machine in the back. Pick-up lines tended to work on him; he liked bravery.

“Been a long day, huh?”

“You can say that again.”

The boy was maybe twenty-three, baby-faced, wearing a short-sleeved shirt that displayed his wiry arms. He said his name was Ethan. John said his name was Richard.

“Do you have a wife at home, Richard?” He was half in the bag and spoke languidly, as if he were drawing the question mark with his lips.

“I have a pain in the ass little gal at home and an ex-wife over in Newton,” John said. “But why do we have to talk about that?”

“Just wanted to know what was bugging you, that’s all,” said Ethan. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“I appreciate it. Thanks.” As John sipped the Scotch he felt Ethan’s eyes on him, and each time he peeked over at the kid, he saw him unabashedly staring, eyelashes dipped. It felt good.

The drink was going down quickly. A memory surfaced of Hawkeye Pierce rolling off of him in bed, skin pale and luminous, sweat plastering the black hair to his temples. _Trap, you always look so beautiful right after_ , he said as he got to his feet, although Hawk was the beautiful one. Not that John would tell him that; he would just turn away and laugh: _Go take a shower, you stink worse than me_. An hour earlier as Hawk pranked the whole company by strolling through the mess tent, wearing only a cap and a smile, it was torture to wait. He’d counted seconds until lunch ended and he could tackle his bunkmate with fierce kisses and possess him.

“I’m thinking of a song I just heard,” John said to the kid, finally looking him full in the face. He sang: _“Lately, the things I do astound me.”_

Ethan raised his eyebrows in delight, almost scandalized by this. “Sure,” he said. “’Like Someone in Love.’ It’s ‘sometimes,’ not ‘lately.’” And he sang: _“Sometimes the things I do astound me. Mostly whenever you’re around me.”_

“Yeah, there you go,” said John. “Nice, isn’t it.” He tilted his head back to catch the last drop of his drink.

“You’re so weird,” Ethan said. “Let me get your next one.”

There was a look of predation in the boy’s face when he said this, and John was suddenly spooked. “No, I shouldn’t have any more,” he said. “I just stopped in for a nightcap.”

“Listen,” said Ethan before John could gather his change and stick it in his pocket. “I’m not hustling. I don’t want money.”

“No, I know that.” Looking into his eyes again, John believed him. “I’ve just gotta go.”

“Let me tell you this one thing,” Ethan said. “In case you’re in here again. You know there’s a place—the Hotel Fontaine. It’s not far. They make it easy to—”

John couldn’t help but laugh. “Come on, kid, I know it’s dark in here but look how old I am! You think I’ve never heard of the Hotel Fontaine?”

A little indignant now, Ethan swiveled around on his stool. “Oh, pardon me, then,” he said.

“Really, I’m sorry,” said John. “It’s good to meet you. Have a good night, OK?”

The boy shrugged and gave John a small wave. There was a time—not very long ago, either; just after the divorce was when it was most frequent—when this kind of invitation was welcome. Richard Smith had checked into the Fontaine a handful of times over the years with various one-night friends. But it wasn’t what John wanted now. It was too risky, too unhinged. Imagining the dramatics that came with a flirty little college boy, dark-eyed and delicate, he shuddered, convinced he'd dodged a bullet.

He would go back out into the street, roaming exactly where he liked; come home and find Lucy and they’d work it out. They had to. Even after she’d driven him away tonight, he was thinking about the supple skin on her neck, her low voice in his ear. First forcing himself to think, then actually thinking.

Everything, John made himself believe, would be under control.


	3. Old Clothes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy, Trapper's girlfriend, passes a psychologically eventful night as she learns more about his and Hawkeye's past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying not to abuse Trap too much here. Hope you enjoy! This chapter is a lot more EXPLICIT, so I changed the work's rating to reflect that.

When the door slammed Lucy felt herself alone. Her body was cold. Boys who were that way—she had known one as recently as last year, in her economics seminar, who had been taken out of school to be “treated” in Belmont. Another one died, back home in Omaha, a shy kid with long eyelashes who’d walked to church with her a couple of times and hanged himself in his grandparents’ barn. It could’ve happened to Johnny just as easily. And this other man, Hawkeye—would he be all right? Did making it past your youth help you to bear such weight?

They had seemed good together, she and this doctor it turned out she didn’t know. John McIntyre was dashing, decisive, and prickly—but with a spark, a bright warmth that seared through her when he opened his mouth to laugh, eyes glinting. Some things about him were cartoonish, faintly ridiculous: his rabbit teeth, a loud voice that brayed when he drank. In bed he was volcanic. She could not have guessed this new revelation, but she was thirteen years younger than him and it made her feel, often, like she didn’t know much at all. _Trapper_ , his ex-wife used to call him, a name Lucy disliked—being trapped held no appeal for her, she’d claimed. And look at her now.

In the back of the closet, in mothballs, was Johnny’s officer uniform from Korea. Lucy dug out the brown jacket and held it in front of her in the mirror—if it fit him, he must have been skinny back then. When she slipped it on she looked like a child in a costume, and this gave her a pang of frustration. She was Lucy Stevens, short for Lucretia, not that she dared tell anyone that. It wasn’t the first time she’d wished she could be male, large, radiating power with the suggestion of physical dominance. Lucy was a tall and hale girl—at Radcliffe she had rowed crew—but a girl she remained, standing on smooth, curvy stems. She took off her skirt and stood in her halter and white underwear, the jacket square and hulking over her frame. It isn’t enough for him, she thought, as a sob leapt in her chest.

Lucy knew he kept some photos from the war in a cigar box in his top drawer. Fumbling, she went for them, and spilled them out onto the bed. Little, square, grey pictures of Johnny, younger, a cute captain in his class A’s with curly hair and a chin dimple. A real rake. He stood near a jeep; near a tent; with a little Korean boy that held his hand. In several pictures John was next to a young man who was so handsome he was beautiful, with black hair and pale, heavy-lidded eyes. Hawkeye—who else could it be?—was stooped and lazy-looking, tall and lank, melancholy, utterly magnetic.

***

She let the radio play and fell asleep on the couch with the lights on. McIntyre came home after three, startled her with his key in the lock. A tall silhouette made by the porch light through the glass, then a big, graceful body angling into the room shoulders first.

“I waited for you.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” Even as his face was dark with shame, it was like he couldn’t help but smile; he was fond of her. It didn’t soften her much this time.

“Well?”

He stepped toward her and she stood up to look him in the eye. His hands clutched her shoulders, swiftly. “You know I don’t want to change anything between us,” he said. “I’ve been out just thinking about you, about how good this is.” His eyes were searching her, frantic.

Lucy twisted her lip when she smelled the whiskey. They stood like that for too long and she looked behind her at the wall. “You have surgery in the morning,” she said, breaking away. “Come to bed.”

Feet still planted, he kept his hand on her and trailed his fingers down her arm. She felt him watch her back, the swell of her ass through the white fabric.

“You can take me to bed all right.”

“I don’t feel like it. You’re drunk.” She’d had a few cocktails herself, but he didn’t have to know. Johnny went into the bathroom and didn’t come out for awhile, she didn’t know how long.

***

“Honey, what is this? Why do you have this stuff out?” In the bedroom were the scattered photos, the ASU jacket crumpled on the floor. He picked the jacket up and shook it, returned it to the hanger and balanced the hanger at the top of the closet door. Its brass buttons still gleamed. Questioningly, frightened, John snapped his head around to look at her where she was sitting on the edge of the bed. The move was childlike, almost a flinch.

"I mean... whaddyou think you're looking for?"

Lucy hadn’t expected to break down. “I want—I want to know more,” she said, the words stuttering out along with the waterworks. “I want to understand what it was like with him. Will you tell me?” She had envied some of the past girlfriends, a hot discomfort that caused her body to need him, but that had nothing on this.

He went to the bed and sat beside her. His mouth was eager on hers, lively with relief, as he crushed her to him and let her paint tears on his face. When he was hooking his fingers through the leg of her panties she told him to stop. She started picking up the photos one by one.

He and Hawk in Hawaiian shirts, grinning like hyenas. They were in Tokyo for the weekend, Johnny said, and later he made a remark to some WAC who socked him in the nose. Hawkeye treated him in the hotel, stuffed gauze up his nostrils and funneled daiquiris into him as they lay around in the heat in their shorts. They ground up against each other with only the thin cotton between them, then found each other’s hands, giggling at the absurdity; it was painful to kiss.

Hawk sitting in the dirt at the top of the hill where the choppers landed, his gaze reaching into the mountains. He had just lost a patient after a grueling six hours at the table. Johnny said that after snapping the picture he went to Hawk and sat close, put his arms around him. (Just like he was doing now at this late date, to her, Lucy did not point out.) It might have been the only time he acted so tenderly toward the other man, he added, a little apart from camp where no one could see them.

The pretty nurse with the pixie hairdo was Margie Cutler. She beamed at Hawkeye while they ate off trays; on her other flank was Johnny’s right arm and right ear, recognizable by the blond curls. Oh, that was a morning, he said. (If he were sober, would he have told?) He was fucking Margie—she straddled him while he sat on a bench—when Hawk walked in on them. Over her shoulder he watched his friend’s eyes dull with desire, watched his jaw hang open like a dog’s, murmured to the girl that they had company. Margie turned around and sucked Hawkeye, moaning on his cock though they were all trying to be quiet, for a few minutes of blinding pleasure until John had to withdraw and come hot streaks that dripped down the backs of her thighs. A quick cleanup and they tried it the other way, Hawk on top of Margie and watching her give head to Johnny as he kneeled over them on her bunk. He said she’d been good, incredible, but Lucy was the only girl who could ever get all of him in her mouth.

The only _girl_ , he said.

Lucy closed the cigar box and put it on the floor. She kissed John deep, still sniffling, angry that he made her feel this way, jolted with pity for everyone in his past including him. There was also the spicy smell rising from inside his clothes, the way he held her ribcage and smeared his thumbs across her breasts in the halter top—she felt lost.

In a moment a clear thought blazed into her mind: this guy has always been the one to leave first. Then another one just as clear: I wonder if I’ll be the first one to leave him. She unbuttoned John’s shirt, clutched the collar so he could struggle out of it, grabbed the end of his belt to free it from the buckle and whisk it off in one motion. It won’t be soon. But I think I’m going to leave him. The pity increased and she forced it into her belly, refusing to cry anymore.

“Put that down, you’re making me nervous,” said Johnny, but through a naughty smirk that she recognized. Lucy was still holding the belt.

“Sorry, man,” she said. She rolled onto him and lay him down, scooted him up the bed’s rumpled surface with her knees, closer to the wooden bedrails. “The gears are already turning.” The leather strip would have to wrap around the rail a few times to be tight enough. Here in the wee hours the jazz music on the radio had become a chaotic musical experiment—she heard screeches and wails, piano keys banged with fists.

_It wasn’t wrong of you to love that boy, Captain_ , she thought after she came, riding him, using one hand to rub herself, digging nails into his side with the other. She'd wake up with stomach cramps, probably, from doing it so hard. His soft hazel eyes pleaded with her under knit brows, wrists bound above his head and hips straining. _It was wrong for you to treat him that way, but it wasn’t wrong for you to love him._ She unbuckled John from the bed and let him flip her onto her side, fuck her from behind with long quick strokes until he cursed and sighed his finish into the back of her neck. He locked his big arms around her and they stayed like that for some time.

She might not love the bastard forever, but she yearned to help him, she realized soon—once he was sleeping and snoring, a tangled sheet wound carelessly around his waist. She might even defend him.

***

Lucy got out of bed, lifted the military jacket off the door and put it back in the closet. There she found the other garment John had carried back from the war—a bathrobe, taxicab yellow, its texture roughened with age and harsh soap. She loved to wear this robe; she swam in it, its arms drooping down below her hands; she padded into the living room and made it hug her nakedness as she sat in the armchair with her knees tucked under her. From their bay window she saw the first light of dawn starting to blanch the clouds over the river.

I, Lucretia Stevens, am seeing the sun come up, she thought. I, Midwesterner, humanitarian, aspiring psychologist, mistress, deviant. Johnny usually got up around now to stumble around in the shower, then dress and kiss the top of her head on his way to the hospital. _Bye sweetheart._ Today Lucy was the early riser, and she’d be the first to depart into the world. In a minute she’d finally switch off the radio, head to the kitchen to start some coffee, drop an apple in her pocket for later. She would throw a light sweater on and leave first, making him casually wonder where she went and why she didn’t say goodbye.


	4. Experience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trapper's memories are manageable... but soon something more tangible appears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flashbacks, flushed faces. Here goes nothing.

***

It was today that Hawk was scheduled to arrive, and Lucy wasn't around to get the house ready. It wasn't like her to be gone when he woke up. Then again, last night had been an unusual one for them both. John decided to put it out of his mind--try to, at least--until after he was done with the big procedure of the day. A mug of coffee the size of his car helped as he greeted various bland, friendly faces in the surgical ward and scrubbed up.

They pretty much all liked him here. They said he "went by instinct" and that they admired his expertise, his experience. He just wondered if Hawkeye would have a knack for seeing through all that. He, for one, must know that once in awhile John wasn't very good at all.

***

In the already-dim O.R., the lights flickered—Trapper noticed this first. Then he realized a shell had gone off about a foot from their window, a collective exhalation of shock risen from everyone inside. His ears rang but he could hear Henry Blake’s voice saying _Don’t move from here! Everyone stays where they are, capeesh?_ A sickening whine and then another blast, this one maybe a little further away but he couldn’t tell for sure.

He was wrist-deep in a boy’s stomach, still feeling around inside for fragments he might have missed. The whole gut was a mess of lacerations; this kid was losing blood much faster than they could put it in him. “Your sponge, doctor,” said Margaret, who’d chosen to assist him since this case was so severe. John muttered a thank-you and plucked out the lap sponge he had missed, dripping red onto the tray. On the patient’s arm was a crude tattoo of a heart.

An explosion shook the room and John lost his footing, lurching forward. More screams. Then silence and stillness, tense air, as everyone waited for another one. It didn’t arrive, for sixty seconds or so, and he stood up slowly, surgical gown hot and stained, noticing only then that he’d fallen onto the belly and shielded the patient with his own body.

“No pulse,” said the gas-passer.

John took another look at the shredded stomach, the discrete pieces of what had been the liver. “It’s impossible, goddammit!” A few heads turned his way. “The hell could I do with this?” He looked at Margaret and found her eyes, reproachful, alarmed.

Henry paused his own work and scanned the O.R., his mask failing to hide a scowl. “Klinger, how many more are out there?” he called into the pre-op hallway.

“None, sir,” came the reply.

“Terrific,” Henry said. “McIntyre, your shift just ended—go get yourself cleaned up. And for God’s sake, get some sleep.”

Great, John thought: the soothing lullaby of exploding shells. He walked out of the O.R. whipping off his cap and face mask, spiked his bloody, balled-up gown into the hamper and kicked the door open.

Back in the Swamp, Hawkeye laid down his dirty magazine when he heard John enter. “Shelling stopped, huh?” he said. “Thought it was a little early for Bastille Day.”

Usually John would be ready with some sort of quip, but he only grunted.

“What’s the matter?” Hawk sat up on his bunk, leaned back onto his elbows. “What’s the matter, you all right?”

“Ever get the feeling you’re lousy at what you do?” He didn’t feel like saying more. His voice was ready to break with the effort of it.

“Never,” said Hawk with a smirk. Then, after John brought his hand away from his eyes: “No, Trap, you know I do. It happens all the time. Doesn’t mean I’m actually lousy, though—people have bad days.”

“Yep. Bad days.” Saying this overwhelmed him: these, right here, were bad days all right. Ground scorched to oblivion, endless expanses of burnt dust that had once been lush growing fields. Beautiful children orphaned, filthy and wailing at roadsides on every drive out of camp. One guy with a heart on his arm whose loving home would have to keep waiting forever.

He sat at the edge of Hawk’s bed, silent. He wasn't a crier but water stung his eyes when Hawk scooted behind his friend and put his arms around him, just holding him like that under his ribs. They breathed in and out, matching each other, and John could feel Hawk's skull press the side of his neck, mouth nestled against his collarbone with slow, questioning lips. Soon John turned around and fell forward onto the bed, reached across the cloudy night to pull Hawk into his embrace. They kissed; it was like Hawk was trying to make John a part of him, drag his soul out of his chest and swallow it. The kiss made him hard almost instantly and he thrust against Hawk’s leg, sighing when Hawk’s hand closed around him and stroked. Hawk lay on top of him, then rolled over beside him, and he groped his way into Hawk’s shorts and stroked him too, the shorts and scrubs came off and they were kissing fiercely, chasing a release that didn’t take long to arrive. When Hawk threw his head back and came, that made John come.

Afterward they were lying together in the much-too-narrow bunk, entwined because it was necessary to be entwined, otherwise you couldn’t lie together. Hawk asked what had happened. John told him: bombing was very close to camp, he was careless and he lost the kid.

“Belly wound?” Hawkeye said.

“A fucking disaster,” said Trapper. “I know I couldn’t have pulled it off anyway. But maybe—”

“Shush.” Frank would probably be by any minute. Hawkeye got up and poured a martini, passed the glass over to John where he was still under the covers. “Here,” he said. “Nighty-night.”

John looked at him and felt, mixed with his affection, a twinge of ridicule for the way his bunkmate looked when he served him: a ministering angel wearing nothing but a pair of green wool socks. “If you like, I can take a picture of you in that outfit and send it to Sunbathers Annual,” John said through breaths of laughter.

“No, not until I’ve had my hair appointment,” said Hawk. The new shift set to begin soon, he threw on his robe and stomped out, heading to the showers.

John drained the martini in a couple of gulps and fell asleep in Hawk’s bed.

***

“Clamp.”

The beep of the monitor was steady; the stent had been put in place and the patient, a fifty-five-year-old lawyer from Dedham, would almost certainly survive. The younger nurse, Bianca, the smart one, handed John a clamp. Air conditioning hummed through the room forming a pleasing, neutral noise that blended with that of the machines: respirator, EKG, a little electric fan the nurses kept on the counter. He closed, taking care not to rush, although suturing like this was not difficult.

“OK girls, it’s lunchtime. Get him out of here.” The two nurses, Bianca and Stella, glanced at each other and laughed politely. They covered the patient with a waffle-weave blanket, wheeled him into post-op.

This was John’s last surgery of the day and there was some time to sit in his office afterward. He called the house to see if Lucy had returned yet, but the phone just rang. Eventually his secretary buzzed him on the intercom.

“Hey, Marcia, if that’s my sandwich you can bring it in.”

“No, doctor, there’s a guest here to see you.”

The door opened then—Hawk didn’t wait for an invitation. Still thin and rangy, the hair a gunmetal grey but the face the same: sly, intelligent, with a closed-lipped grin that threatened to split into a guffaw. He wore a suede jacket, slacks and tennis shoes. John stood up when he saw him, instinctively, as if to prove right away who was taller. He felt his face getting flushed; he suddenly recalled various times Hawk had called his bluff around the poker table.

Hawkeye took a couple of steps into the office and for a moment just stood there. He turned up his palms, a gesture a little like somebody turning out their pockets to show they had no money on them. Then John started to laugh. Loud. He couldn’t stop it.

The first words out of Hawk’s mouth were, “What? What did I do?” but he was laughing too—before long both men were wet-eyed and catching their breath. They gave each other a brief hug.

“This is just great,” said John, still laughing, clapping him on the back. “I ordered myself a sandwich and I suppose now I have to get you one. Is roast beef OK?”

“Nah, I’m not that hungry,” Hawkeye said. “But I’ll eat your pickle if you don’t want it.”

“You’ll do what?”

More laughter, high and melodic, so loud John knew it must be echoing all the way down the hall of the hospital.

Someone was being paged on the overhead PA, but it wasn’t him.


	5. Objections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A reunion between Trapper and Hawkeye, with some objections.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Note: I added a new chapter 2 in addition to this-- apologies for any confusion. Chapters 2 and 5 are both new on 8/31/18 but everything flows sequentially in time.)

 

                                    ***********************************************

 

“God, it’s been ages since I’ve been here. Did you know I used to come to Boston with my school marching band? This was in eighth grade, before I played football. Look at you! I can’t believe it—in the flesh!”

“A little fleshier than before, maybe?” John did a half-turn with his arms outstretched.

“Oh, pshaw, Mister Modesty. You’re an Adonis for life. Look at those legs!”

And it was that way that they started talking: he offered Hawk a seat and heard all about what he’d been up to. _Living with him is great, I have to say I feel really at peace for once._ At lines like that John couldn’t help but shush his friend, trying to cloak his embarrassment in comedy: _Goddammit, say that away from the door! Don’t you know they got ears everywhere?_

Hawk said he never could have guessed how good it would feel to live authentically. He said mornings were the best, with frost on the window and his beloved downstairs making flapjacks. He said in eighth grade he had worn a fancy cylinder hat and played the snare drum.

The laugh lines around Hawk’s eyes had deepened. He was still thin, and elastic-backed, his arms loose. John thought he must look different himself, more different than his friend looked to him. He took a quick mental inventory: at the crown, the hair was starting to go. The body was still good, with muscular heft and not much flab, big shoulders, good carriage. But the tailored dress shirt, the Brooks Brothers tie, slacks with a crease—this part Hawkeye didn’t know. Yes, he’d become a sellout. Was there something in his face, too—a bitterness? Lucy told him he frowned too much, but Hawkeye had never said that. As before, he hoped Hawk couldn’t see the unpleasant part of him. Then, also as before, he felt an uncomfortable urge to reveal it.

The intercom buzzed. “Doctor, your lunch arrived.”

“Thanks. Hold it there for a minute, OK?” John narrowed his eyes at Hawkeye and moved toward the coat tree, found his jacket and put it on.

“What’s happening here?” Hawk asked. “Are we going around the corner to see your bookie?”

John forced a chuckle. “I thought we’d take a walk,” he said, but he felt his voice getting too loud. “It’s nice over by the river. You feel like doing that?”

Hawk smiled with a tilt of the head, warm yet skeptical, not replying. He wasn’t being given a choice.

***

It was easy to enjoy Beacon Hill on a Spring afternoon, the sidewalk full of young people walking in pairs and threes, most of them carrying books. Rows of pretty brick townhouses nestled together; storefronts flung their doors wide to display oranges, framed lithographs, high-heeled shoes. John kept glancing over at Hawk, noticing how the breeze ruffled his greying hair. His slate-colored eyes squinted against the sun.

On the esplanade was a bench with a rock behind it, not a secluded spot, but one that seemed slightly more private than the other benches. John hustled over to it with quick steps, turned to face his friend once he’d reached it and claimed it for them. The branches of a willow shielded the bench from the walkway somewhat. “How ‘bout this? This OK?” He peeled his jacket off, flapped it once, and hung it over the backrest.

Hawkeye was standing with his hands in his pockets, face placid and still. Caught in the dapples of light between willow leaves, John realized he was being evaluated and found satisfactory. There was a lot more in Hawk’s gaze, though— _I’ve missed you_ , it said, for starters.

“So you live nearby, in the height of style?” He sat beside John, but kept some space between them, a glossy swath of green paint the width of a palm. “I thought that’s what you said in your letter.”

“I don’t think I used those words,” said John. “I live just over there. See the white awning? It’s right behind that.” He had to reach his arm across Hawk’s face to point in the right direction, move a little closer to him. “You can decide how stylish it is.”

“Hm. Great.” Hawk kept the smile, looked at the river like he was expecting Botticelli’s Venus to rise from its depths. John didn’t know how he could be so calm.

“So, my girlfriend’s A-OK,” John said abruptly. “You’ll like her. A little young.”

“You dog.”

“Eh.” John swiped the air in front of his nose. “I mean it, though. She’s a decent catch. Studying to be a shrink.”

“Oh yeah? What does she say is wrong with you?”

“Catholic guilt and a little war trauma.”

“I could’ve told you that, Captain.”

They sat there in silence for ten seconds that felt like a hundred, John with his heart thumping. At last he breathed in, stamped his foot for courage. “I don’t know how to ask you this,” he said. “Am I blushing?”

Hawkeye looked at him again, that same warm look as before. “Yes, you’re blushing, Trap,” he said. “And you have your arm around me. Did you notice?”

He’d placed his arm across the back of the bench—the classic movie-house maneuver—but now jerked it away. “What can I say. I’m ungainly.”

“You’re gainly enough. You just like to be in people’s personal space. You always did.”

Trapper looked down and fumbled with the paper bag that still held his roast beef sandwich. He strangled an impulse to say something rude: _Thanks for changing the rules on me. You never had a problem with it before_. “I guess you’re not wrong,” he muttered instead.

He figured they should be making small talk, about his practice and what restaurants were good and all of that bullshit. John hated this new demon, awkwardness, that had glommed onto him sometime in the past few years.

“You said you wanted to ask me something,” said Hawk. “It’s OK. What is it?”

John frowned and stuck out his lip. “It’s gonna sound stupid,” he said, “but… when you look at me, how do I seem to you?”

“What do you mean? What kind of a thing is that to ask? How do you _seem_?”

“Am I the same as I was back then?” He clung to the question but Hawk was right, it did sound funny.

“You look terrific. Of course you’re the same. At least, you haven’t shown me otherwise. Yet.” He was canny. The way he slouched forward, body twisted in scrutiny, said he was wise to something. John nodded and pretended the matter was closed.

“Here, have half of this.” John was unwrapping the sandwich; he took a bite of one half and placed the other half on Hawkeye’s lap. “It’s a pretty decent lunch place they got over on Blossom Street.”

“OK. Good idea, eat something. Some calories might get you out of your identity crisis.” They both ate. Hawk remarked that it was a good sandwich, and Trapper felt like he was on firmer ground. But then—“Is it me, Trapper?” This spoken through a mouthful of bread.

John gave him an affronted look.

Hawk wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Is it me? The way I’m living now? What makes you so uncomfortable?”

John believed Hawk knew the answer already, but just wanted to hear it. This made him feel resentful, and angry, and another thing that stirred him in his body. The frustration of them not making small talk disappeared, replaced by the frustration of them not making love. For a moment he regarded, with shame, his whole romantic career: the adolescence that saw him get his way by charming various people; certain older boys who looked at him a certain way once he got tall; then women of all descriptions. He preferred the wily ones who didn’t go to pieces when he tried stuff like the movie-house arm. The ones over thirty had an eye for him, which he could turn to his advantage. He’d thought marriage to a virgin, giving her a family, could absolve him from all that. Of course he was back at it before the honeymoon was even paid for. He formed the empty bag into a wad and let it fall to the ground.

_It’s not what you have, it’s how you use it_ , is something Hawk himself had told him during the war. But John knew how to use it, he’d been using it everywhere and had stopped even noticing, by the time he was twenty. If that’s how you were at twenty, how do you make it at forty?

“You’re the first one that ever got through to me,” he finally said. He blurted it out. _The only one_ would have been an exaggeration, because there was Lucy, and the two remarkable people he couldn’t believe were his daughters. “That’s all. I guess it makes sense you got through to someone else too.”

“But?” Hawk widened his eyes and waited.

“But it’s not easy having you here, all happy about it,” John admitted. “You know how fast word gets out. I’m just trying to rebuild my life.”

Hawkeye scoffed. “Oh, now I see,” he said. “Jeez, I expect this from most people I know, but you?” He inched away and John thought he might even get up to leave.

“No, I’m not”—A hand on Hawk’s knee seemed like the only way to stop him. “I’m not _rejecting_ you, for God’s sake. It’s me. It’s what you meant to me. How can you throw that away?”

Hawk’s face changed in a matter of seconds. The way his eyes could fill with tears at the drop of a pin was something John hadn’t forgotten. “Trap, why do you think I’m here? It’s not just for the carved heads at the Peabody Museum. I came to see you.”

“Yeah, to shake my hand and make sure I’m not a basketcase so for a few more years we can ignore each other with a clear conscience.”

That got him. “I’d watch what you say if I were you,” he said. “It takes two ignoramuses to ignore each other.”

John leaned in closer. He knew his face was red and he tried to lower his voice. “They’re all gonna know about us,” he said. “But you won’t even give me a piece of the action.” He tried a little smile—there, the charm. Tenderness broke through then, unmistakably, like a single piano note.

Hawk’s face was grave, the eyes still twinkling though. “I had no idea you would care about that,” he said. “No idea.”

And the gap on the bench closed: they reached for each other and embraced, a real one this time. It was all that remained to do. John rested his head behind Hawk’s ear, drank in the clean rainwater scent of him, and held him tightly enough that he thought the ribs would crack. The other man’s hands gripped him at the waist, then the shoulder blades, trying to cover the breadth of his back one grip at a time. They stopped short of kissing, on the public bench beside the crowded street.

“You were dead,” said John when it was done, when he felt better. The words came, quiet but steady, with his forehead touching Hawk's, feeling the dewy sweat at his hairline. “I thought you were dead for over a year. I went really crazy for a while there. It’s OK for it to be over, I understand. But can we sew it up, nice and neat? Just one last time?”

“God, Trap, if you only knew,” Hawk said, breaking the clinch. Even in his rumpled state after the hug, he was sly, incredulous.

“Knew what?”

“The _power_ you have over people!” He beamed and shook his head.

“Takes one to know one, babe. I’m gonna go ahead and put my arm back where it was.”

They sat there for a minute more just looking out over the water, Trapper John with his arm splayed out across the back of the bench. It felt like he owned that bench and everything on it as long as he could stay sitting there.

At last Hawkeye turned again to face him. The sun was starting to sink and golden light flooded the buildings. Hawk shielded his eyes with his hand at a right angle to his face, a perverse salute. “How has it been for you?” he asked gently. “Really. Tell me how you’ve been after the war. How have you felt?”

John, blinking back tears, then suggested that they go away from here, that he knew a hotel they could check into for a couple of hours. Not together, of course—Hawk would check in first, John would follow by himself when the concierge wasn’t looking. Hawk made protests but they were slight, barely objections at all.


End file.
